


Exes I've Had At Home

by Raaj



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Jealousy, M/M, Moving On, Pegoryu Week 2019, Thank You Next, but the title is from 'love me less' lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 17:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20531996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raaj/pseuds/Raaj
Summary: After Ryuji hears Ren on the phone with an old flame, Ren has to smooth things over.





	Exes I've Had At Home

“You better not be hungry,” Boss grumbles when he opens the door for Ryuji.“You did see the sign, right?”The older man raps one glass pane with a knuckle.The sign’s turned to ‘closed’.

“Yeah, Boss,” Ryuji says with a grin.He’s a little breathless after jogging to and from the station.“Just here to see Ren.”

Sojiro lets him in with a nod as Morgana patters down the steps from the attic.“Oy, Ryuji,” the cat says, glancing back up the stairs.“He’ll be a few minutes.”

“What, is he busy?” Ryuji asks.Then he remembers that Sojiro can’t hear Morgana and jumps before correcting himself.“I mean, he must be busy!Because otherwise, he’d, uh…hear us and come down…I’ll just sit tight and wait for him.”

He glances at the cafe owner to see if he’s buying it.Sojiro looks a familiar combination of amused and baffled.“Just don’t make any messes,” Sojiro warns him; the cafe is spic and span, all dishes washed and put away, the floor freshly swept, leaving Ryuji with no doubt the old man would have a conniption if he messed something up.But apparently he trusts the blond enough to leave, closing Leblanc’s door behind him.

Now that Ryuji can talk to Morgana without anyone thinking him crazy, he asks, “What’s he doing?”

One ear on Morgana’s head flicks to the direction of the upstairs.“Taking a phone call.”

Huh.Well, Ryuji should probably take a piss anyway before settling down for games, so he steps into Leblanc’s bathroom and spends a couple minutes relieving himself and then freshening up.

Ren still hasn’t come down when he steps out.It’s only been two or three minutes, but when Ren so rarely takes phone calls instead of texts, and Morgana’s ear keeps swiveling toward the attic, it definitely seems like something is up.He takes a few steps to go upstairs, but then Morgana darts up the next stair to block him.“Hey, hey!Give him a few more minutes!”

“What?I’m just going to tell him I’m he—“

Ryuji shuts up when Ren laughs.He’d think it must be one of their friends calling, but the sound is a little…off.Awkward.

_“I told you, I’m dating someone else now.”_

Ryuji glances down at Morgana.Morgana stares up at Ryuji, looking about as guilty as a cat can.Which is not very.

And then the ex-runner uses the power of having human-length legs to pass right over Morgana’s attempt at blocking him.Because now that his boyfriend is talking about him on the phone, he feels like it involves him. Morgana was listening in, anyway.Can’t be _that_ private.

Ren’s body language says it is, though.He’s turned away when Ryuji stops at the head of the stairs, but it’s still easy to see how tense Ren’s shoulders are, drawn in over folded arms.“Don’t give me that.Of course I moved on.You didn’t give me any reason to wait.”He pauses, letting the other person respond, and then huffs.“No, that’s not an invitation.”

Moved on…to Ryuji?So this person must be…someone Ren used to date.And it sounds like they don’t think Ren should have moved on.And his boyfriend shut them down, _like he should_, but as Ryuji watches, Ren keeps listening, shifting his weight from foot to foot.He doesn’t hang up.

It...feels bad.Ren's never even mentioned an ex before. And maybe it was naive--in hindsight it definitely seems naive-- but Ryuji had gone ahead and assumed Ren not talking about an ex meant Ren was just as fresh to dating as he is. But Ren's got someone, Ren's got someone still calling him after six months, and the feeling that stirs up in Ryuji is something ugly.

It calms a little when he hears Ren say “He _is_ good for me,” so simple, so assured, like it’s just a fact.

But he still doesn’t end the call.And when he shuffles on his feet, turning the slightest bit, Ryuji catches the look on his face from the side.It’s a frown, but not one of his usual scowls: it’s sad and soft.Vulnerable.Like he misses them.

It’s enough to propel Ryuji across the attic.Just as Ren turns to him, that sad look shifting to surprise, Ryuji snatches the phone out of his hand.

"What, are you deaf? He said he's got someone," he snarls into the receiver.

Ren's ex is startled into silence on the other side; all he can hear is their breathing. And then a dry chuckle. _"So he wasn't lying."_

The line goes dead, and Ryuji huffs, looking at the display to confirm that yes, the other guy hung up on him. Chicken.

"What," Ren asks, "was that?"

The deliberate tone Ren takes manages to make Ryuji second-guess himself. "Uh, he hung up, not me," the blond says, holding the phone screen out as if it would verify who ended the call, though it shows only that the call ended.

Ren still accepts it. "I'm not surprised."

"It--it sounded like he was bothering you," Ryuji mutters, pushing the phone back into Ren's hands.

"And you were worried I couldn't handle it? Or were you jealous?" When Ryuji doesn’t answer right away, Ren starts grinning like the cat that caught the canary. "Ryu," he laughs. "You _were_ jealous. That's kinda cute."

"It ain't funny.”

"Hmm," Ren says with a smile. He doesn't agree, obviously. "Are you upset? He's got nothing on you."

"Then why didn't you just hang up on him? He ain't your boyfriend anymore." Ryuji shakes his head, shoving his hands in his back pockets.Ren making light of this is just pissing him off more. "Why didn't you tell me about him?"

The smile drops from Ren's face. "You haven't told me about your exes, either, so--"

"'Cause I don't _have_ any!"

It's mildly reassuring that Ren looks a little surprised. At least Ryuji can console himself that he hasn't been making his inexperience obvious. “Oh.I didn't realize. Figured past was past. That's how it's always been with us."

"No, that's how it always is _with you_.You don't share anything about yourself unless I ask!And obviously it ain’t past if you’re still talking to him.”

“Ryuji.”Ren shoves the phone back at him.“Look through my call history if you want. This is the first time we’ve talked since February, and _he_ called _me_.Ask Futaba if you want.Hell, ask Morgana.I’m sure he’s listening in right now.”

There’s a startled meow-like squeak from the staircase.

Ren just lifts an eyebrow as if to say ‘see?’.“I’ve lost nearly all sense of privacy since coming to Tokyo.Even if I wanted to cheat on you, which I _don’t_, one of them would catch me.”

That…makes sense, but it doesn’t shut up that nagging doubt of not being good enough to stop Ren from missing his old boyfriend.Of being a consolation prize, or even worse, some kind of placeholder while Ren’s in Tokyo.“Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t cover for you,” Ryuji mutters.“Mona was.”

“Mona would cover for me being an idiot, not a shitty person,” Ren says.“…And I was being an idiot.I’m sorry, Ryu.I should’ve hung up as soon as he started—“He cuts himself.Maybe realizing that going into specifics wouldn’t make Ryuji feel better.

“Why’d you talk to him at all?”

“…Chikao and I dated for four months before the arrest,” Ren says.He shifts his weight on his feet, then walks over to his milk crate bed and sits down on the edge.It’s a little tempting to join him, but Ryuji still feels uncertain enough about the situation to stay standing.“And then he ghosted me like everyone else.Well…then there was the part where I was an idiot in denial and thought him blocking my number meant I should try talking to him at his house.That ended as well as you’d expect.”He glances up at Ryuji with a wry smile, but it doesn’t last long.He spreads his hands, palm-up.“I don’t share stuff with you or anyone because I don’t have anything _to_ share.99% of the things I could say about Inaba just piss me off.The 1% I like, I’ve shared.”

“You’ve only told me about your little sister and your puppy love crush on Naoto Shirogane,” Ryuji points out.

“Sounds right for 1%.And you thought the crush thing was weird.”

“Who wants to get kidnapped with their crush?!”

“Kidnapped on _purpose._To stop a kidnapper-murderer.It’s been five years and that’s still the coolest first date I can think of.”Ren pauses.“Our ramen date was pretty cool too, though.”

“Uh-huh.We might as well just count the time we almost got killed by Kamoshida’s shadow as a date, if that’s the sort of thing you like.”Ryuji frowns, kicking softly at one of the crates.It’s easy for him to get pulled off-track, and he doesn’t think Ren’s doing it on purpose, but they’re still getting off-track.“Four months ain’t long.But we haven’t even been dating that long, huh.”It took them four months just to get on the same page with each other.And there’s only a few months left before Ren goes back home.

“Ryuji.”Ren catches his knee, pausing him in another kick.“Chikao and I dated for only four months.We’d been friends since grade school before that.That’s why I took his call.”He lets go, folding his arms as he leans forward.“I thought maybe he wanted to at least apologize for how things went down.And…I don’t want to date him again, but I won’t deny I was tempted to think maybe we could salvage something of our friendship.”

Oh.That…changes things a little.At least in Ryuji’s eyes.Maybe just because he’s seen Ren’s saved contacts and knows that, besides one entry for “home”, all his contacts are from Tokyo.The false assault charge cost him nearly all his relationships, and Ryuji knows how that feels.If one of his old friends that ditched him first year got back in touch with him, he’d like to say he wouldn’t look as sappy as Ren did, but…really, he’d probably be an even bigger sap.

It still bugs him that they dated, too, but—he doesn’t want to be a control freak, or something, he wants to be fair to Ren, and maybe, maybe that means—“I…I mean…if you guys were going to be just friends…I guess…”

“Nope.That would be a bad idea,” Ren says, shooting the idea down before Ryuji can even properly get it out.

“I’m trying to be a good boyfriend here!”

“I know.You’re a great boyfriend.But you got pretty jealous, and it wouldn’t make me a very good boyfriend if I put you in a spot where you didn’t feel good about our relationship.That, and…”Ren pulls a face.“I don’t know how much you could tell from my side, but Chikao made it clear he thought I should give him a second chance.Even after I told him no.If I tried being friends with him again, he’d probably keep pushing about it.He’s kind of…”

“He sounds like an asshole,” Ryuji says flatly.Maybe that’s the jealousy talking, because the thought of this guy pushing Ren for more when he was already offered a second chance he doesn’t deserve is riling him up again.

“Yeah, sometimes he is.”Ren sighs.“Kid me did not have the best taste in friends. And I think that friendship has run its course.”After a few seconds’ silence, he pushes himself up from the bed.“So.I’m sorry I upset you.Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

Ryuji hesitates. “Um…Can you tell me about how I’m good for you?”

It’s an embarrassing request to make, needing to be reassured, but he feels more confident about it when he sees one of Ren’s rarer smiles, soft and warm.“Yeah,” he says.“I think I can do that.”


End file.
